S/O: are you fluent in a second language

[AnnieW625]

Neither DH nor I are; although DH at one point knew enough Spanish to get straight As in it high school and then test out of having to take an additional year in college (which isn’t easy as true Spanish he said per his high school teacher was Castilian and not Mexican Spanish), but he doesn’t speak it well enough to be an interpreter at work. His great grandparents only spoke Spanish, but most of them died when he was a teen, and he had moved away from them a few years prior. His Mom, and Grandma are still fluent. His other grandmother spoke fluent French though but he didn’t see her much. I am not fluent in any other language than English. My maternal Grandpa was fluent in German, but he didn’t speak it on a regular basis, just until he went to kindergarten and learned English (my great grandparents immigrated from Austria and my great grandma taught herself English and wrote to him in English in college....we found letters when my grandma died.......not sure how my great grandpa learned as he came here before she did, but my mom mention her Dad telling her that his mom taught herself English when she came to the US and had no plans to return to Austria).

Poll coming


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[gamma]

I am somewhat proficient in American Sign Language. I am slowly learning Polish and really enjoying it!

[smilequeen]

No. I could read and write in French very well but I do not have the ear to understand it or a talent for speaking it. My husband is bilingual though.

[gymnbomb]

No, no one in our extended family is. I took a couple of years of Spanish in high school and my father knows (or at least knew, I don’t think he kept them up) a decent amount of French and bits of German and Russian I think?


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[niccig]

Not fluent, but I spoke Japanese well. I learned it from grade 8 through college and I lived there as an exchange student when I was 16. I never considered myself fluent. I haven’t spoken it in decades, and I’m surprised what I can understand and say when I do use it.

My mother’s first language was Afrikaans, she never taught it to us saying it wasn’t a useful language to know. She spoke it with her parents, both spoke English so we spoke English with them.


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[georgiegirl]

Not currently. I was near fluent in Italian for a while, but it’s been years since I’ve used it.

DH is bilingual. But his native language is pretty obscure (Cyrillic alphabet but not Russian, only spoken in that specific country) though, so we never thought about trying to teach it to the kids.


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[bisous]

I suppose I'd consider myself fluent in French but I have an accent and I still make funky grammatical errors all the time I'm sure! I can read it, write it, and converse with natives though.

[Simon]

I was near fluent for some years but not currently. I haven't used that language in over a decade.
I value multilingualism and we are working towards bilingualism for our kids in a different language than my second language. I am trying to pick up their second language but know very little so far.

[JElaineB]

No, I minored in Spanish in college but have never been anywhere near fluent. Though you missed Spanish in the poll.

[pinay]

My parents immigrated to this country as adults and married here, so it's actually somewhat surprising that my brothers and I are fluent in their native language. They insisted that we speak ONLY that language at home, we didn't particularly appreciate it at the time, but now we are all glad that we have the capacity. I don't get to use it much anymore though, so I'm pretty rusty.

[123LuckyMom]

I used to be fluent in French, but I lost a lot through lack of use. I can still understand pretty well, and I can read very well, but I wouldn’t feel at all confident speaking. I can’t come up with the words, though I recognize them when written or spoken by someone else. The languages I have are pretty much all ancient. I have Biblical Hebrew, Classical and Koine Greek, Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin, modern French, and I can read and translate German. I needed that second modern language for graduate school, and I took a course specifically on learning to read and translate, but I’ve never spoken a word.

What makes me crazy is that I don’t have Spanish. My husband is a bilingual Spanish speaker, many of his relatives only speak Spanish, and I was desperate for my kids to be bilingual, but because my husband felt awkward speaking Spanish when I couldn’t, my kids only speak English! I fantasize about going to an intensive Spanish immersion program and speaking Spanish in our home to teach the kids, but I have neither the time nor the money to do that. Boo!


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[citymama]

Yes, but more than one. :) I speak 3 languages fluently and 2 others reasonably well. I was bilingual since birth and added 2 others in middle/high school, one as an adult.

You don't have Spanish on the list!

My Dh speaks only English fluently but has studied a few other languages, including one in which he did graduate school research, so I think he's quite strong in though out of practice. Sadly, my kids are currently not bilingual but I hope that will change once they take a second language in middle school.

[AnnieW625]

Yes, but more than one. :) I speak 3 languages fluently and 2 others reasonably well. I was bilingual since birth and added 2 others in middle/high school, one as an adult.

You don't have Spanish on the list!

My Dh speaks only English fluently but has studied a few other languages, including one in which he did graduate school research, so I think he's quite strong in though out of practice. Sadly, my kids are currently not bilingual but I hope that will change once they take a second language in middle school.

Oh jease.....how ironic of me!


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[klwa]

No. I took French in high school for three years. The last two years were "fully immersive" classes, taught in French. I learned jsut enough French at the time to get As and Bs in the class. Now I can remember certain phrases (generally not sane phrases. More like "I am a lumberjack.")

[kara97210]

My mother is from France (moved to the US as a young child) and I'm fluently in French. We spent a lot of summers in France growing up and I take the kids back every year to visit my grandmother and other relatives. As a kid I'd occasionally dream in French, but haven't in probably 20 years. My kids are both learning Spanish in school and are comfortable, although not fluent, with French.

[kara97210]

My mother is from France (moved to the US as a young child) and I'm fluently in French. We spent a lot of summers in France growing up and I take the kids back every year to visit my grandmother and other relatives. As a kid I'd occasionally dream in French, but haven't in probably 20 years. My kids are both learning Spanish in school and are comfortable, although not fluent, with French.

[lizzywednesday]

I am not fluent in any language other than English, but I have great fun learning other languages, even just elements.

I have some very basic ASL (words like "yes", "no", "maybe", "shoes", "sand", "bird", "duck", "airplane", "water", "coat", and family relationships, etc., mostly outdoor, playground, & beach words because that's where I used them most often) and elementary reading-level Spanish with a little spoken, but not as much as I'd like.

I can also sort-of read very simple paragraphs in German, French, and Italian, but I don't often have the right vocabulary to pick up nuance, slang, or full comprehension for more complex sentences, so I'd like to work on that. (I picked up most of my non-English languages through singing, and I made an effort to know what exactly I was singing about, which helped connect the vocab with the meaning, but I wouldn't be able to speak any of the above.)

I also read a little Yiddish.

[mom2binsd]

I was an exchange student in Denmark in 1986 and became fluent speaking (my reading was ok, writing was not great). When I'm around my Danish friends ever so infrequently I can pick it up again within a few hours (and a few glasses of wine seems to help).

I grew up in Canada where all children are given some French language instruction. I only had what is called core French, so 40 min a day. But I grew up in a city that is very bilingual, and all the signs are in both languages and all products have French/English ingredients and directions. I can speak it fairly well once I'm around French speakers, and can read it at about a 6th grade level.

[marinkitty]

I've never been fluent in another language. I used to be conversant in Spanish, but now I struggle after many years of not using it regularly. I can still understand and read it fairly well. I used to be able to do basic communication in Cantonese because I lived in Hong Kong as a kid, but after we left I never used it again so lost it all. I could never write though. Same with Dutch - I lived there and had basic conversation skills that were pretty much completely lost after I left. I went back a couple of summers ago and really could only manage basic phrases and was surprised how little I could understand now. I'm working on acquiring Portuguese. I read it quite well and understand a decent amount of spoken Portuguese but my speaking skills are horrendous. Part of that is my background in Spanish - my accent is terrible as a result - and part of it is that I just do not have a natural ear for languages. Even when I was fully conversant in Spanish after years straight of HS and college level courses, I still thought in English and quickly translated in my head.

None of my kids are fluent - yet! They are all taking Spanish and I plan to have that continue all the way through high school (though my current 7th grader is making noises about high school Latin) and ideally they would all learn Portuguese as well (not taught in our schools) since we have a house there.